About 43 percent of the world’s population is bilingual.
If you can only speak one language right now, there are many benefits to learning another language as well so that you can join that 43 percent.
Are you considering learning another language for business? Read this article to learn the top advantages of being bilingual for business.
1. Makes You More Competitive
Becoming bilingual and taking a great Spanish vocabulary course can actually make you a more competitive employee to hire.
If you know a second language, this can make your resume stand out more and potentially launch you to the top of the list when people are looking for new employees.
Companies now are focused on serving all kinds of diverse cultures and populations whether that be on their home turf or across the world. If a company can hire someone who will be able to communicate with all kinds of new customers, they have more of an incentive to bring them onto their team.
A lot of companies even have international offices so that their products can reach out to even more customers. If you can work either at their home office or one of their international ones, there will bee a lot more opportunities for you as well.
Being bilingual and speaking fluently in both languages will look amazing on a resume, but even if you know a few keywords and phrases can make you stand out more than another applicant.
2. Help Your Social Life
Being able to speak two languages also opens up a lot of other social opportunities. If you feel like you don’t have great social skills or confidence when it comes to interacting with people, this is a great way to help boost that.
If you can meet a new group of people and communicate with them in their language, you’ll automatically feel a lot more confident.
In addition to that, it may even help you make more friends that you normally wouldn’t have made.
3. Increases Your Ability To Network
When it comes to being able to communicate with more people, you’ll also be able to network as well.
Networking is crucial when it comes to business, and if you can speak another language, you open up so many more opportunities for yourself.
Whether it’s at a business event or even on LinkedIn, you increase your chances of finding a good company to work for.
If you are already employed, it could help you network within your company as well. You may be able to travel to an international office and talk with the people who are there.
You may also be able to network with new customers and introduce them to your company’s product or services.
4. Open Up New Doors
As we’ve kind of touched on, speaking another language will open so many new doors for you.
Whether that’s within your industry or if you want to change industries.
For example, you could become a translator or an interpreter. As businesses grow to countries other than their own, the need for translators is becoming more and more necessary.
You can work in the military, police, education system, hospitals, or even just at a corporate office.
If you don’t want to work as a translator, the travel, healthcare, national security, and tourism industries are also growing incredibly fast. They need employees who are bilingual because sometimes it’s important to be able to communicate with others.
As with the other jobs, knowing that a second language will make you a more appealing candidate to hire.
5. Improves Brain Function
Aside from helping you in your career, it will also improve your brain function and can be good for your health.
Multiple studies and research has shown that being bilingual can affect the human brain and rewire the network.
It can also help improve other functions like planning and solving skills, memory, reasoning, and other important functions. Your brain may even work faster than the brain of someone who can only speak one language.
One function that is enhanced is the brain’s inhibitory control. This is the function that helps someone filter our irrelevant information to them. That means they can problem-solve something better and calmly determine what decision to make.
Lastly, learning a language can actually keep you healthy and sharp. It can improve your ability to multitask, control attention, and problem solve. It may even help you be more creative as well!
6. Makes Your Travel Easier
If you love to travel, speaking another language is going to be incredibly helpful.
Traveling becomes a lot easier when you don’t have to deal with a language barrier, and it can actually make it more of an authentic experience as well.
You can speak directly to the locals, and you may even make some friends that you never would’ve expected to.
You will also be able to order food without having to awkwardly try and use hand signals to convey what you want.
7. Earn More Money
Lastly, people who are bilingual can actually earn more money as well.
It depends on your job and the company you work at, but some research has shown that people who are bilingual get paid up to 20 percent more than people who only speak one language.
So it may be worth it to take those extra foreign language classes while you’re in college!
Discover More Advantages Of Being Bilingual
These are only a few of the advantages of being bilingual, but there are so many more.
Go out and sign up for some language classes today!
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